The 8kb(ish) limit was a limit on the whole row before SQL 2008. From SQL 2008 the limits changed to individual fields for varchar, nchar, varbinary and sql_variant fields. The sum of the other column types in the row can still not exceed 8kb(ish) so that would include char and nchar. Good article on MSDN to explain the differences: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms186981.aspx The point is well made though. Even with SQL 2008 the difference between 8Kb and 32Kb is a large one to manage.